Jools Holland never did make a wholly convincing bad boy. Even when he toured with Squeeze, the essential London song-writing band of the 1980s, and went on to present the genre-busting youth show The Tube alongside Paula Yates live on Channel 4, Holland always seemed sardonic and quirky rather than dangerous or louche. And this despite the fact he was banned from appearing on screen for a while for uttering a profanity on air.

This month the proper status of the cheery, quick-witted presenter of the longest-running music programme on television has been confirmed. Holland is now officially a pillar of the musical establishment. It was announced on Tuesday that he is to be the 20th recipient of the Music Industry Trusts' Award, an honour previously received by Sir Tom Jones and Lord Lloyd-Webber.

The citation notes his "outstanding contribution to music and music broadcasting", but for Holland it is simply a welcome gift: recognition, as he puts it, "for being 53 and not dead".

Still a popular touring musician, performing around 100 gigs a year with his 19-strong Rhythm and Blues Orchestra, the pianist with a penchant for the nostalgic sound of boogie woogie has almost accidentally also become national gatekeeper to a world of new music on TV.

With instinctive modesty, Holland plays down his role as a great transmitter of enthusiasm for a dizzying array of music styles.

"I take much more of a Zen view," he says, speaking the day after a big band date near Conwy in Wales. "I only know about a few things, but I am quite good at bluffing. There are a whole range of subjects, including the Renaissance, which I am prepared to sound expert on."

His success on screen, he thinks, is due to a love of music in general and a feeling for the people who play it. "With the TV show we are trying to achieve a balance of different things. It is not always my taste. You are trying to get a music legend on, as well an important person of today, and a new performer too, and then perhaps someone who is mainly known in their own particular world."

The truth for Holland is that all music should try "to really move the human spirit" and that different sounds will work for different people. "For some it might be the wind in the trees and that is fine. On the whole, though, attitudes to music have changed and people are much more accepting of different genres. In the past, people used to actually hate people who liked different music to them, whether it was mods and rockers in the 60s, or heavy metal fans not liking Motown, or reggae fans not understanding English folk, or whatever. And I suppose it was rather sweet in some ways, but I would like to think I had something to do with the fact fans aren't so blinkered any more."

In 30 years of presenting, Holland has interviewed and played with some of the biggest names in the industry and he has watched the downside of fame spool out at first hand.

"Some people manage to stay focused and some don't. It is not just people who are well-known who have these problems though. It is the same for publicans, or greengrocers, or people in your own family. You can sometimes see the signs; obviously, if people take too many drugs and drink. Or if they don't listen to enough music."

Holland concedes that talented musicians can find it hard to cope, but he argues the problem is at least as old as the blues.

"I was recently given a Fats Waller autograph by Charlie Watts, who collects jazz and blues memorabilia like me. It was written on an IOU for one hundred dollars, which was quite a lot of money back then. Charlie said to me: 'You know, Fats went straight out to drink that money.' "

Great talent, Holland believes, is "very rare" and the idea that there was ever a golden age for music is flawed. "In any era there is never a lot of great talent around. More people are taking up music now because of these talent shows, but you have to to be a poet in your work. Amy Winehouse and Paul Weller are examples of poets, I think."

The phenomenon of TheX Factor and its ilk have largely passed Holland by, but he does worry about the impact on musicianship and the aspirations of the young.

"I don't mean to sound superior when I say I haven't seen these shows. From what I gather, a lot of it is about bursting into tears. You can't really knock people for going on these shows, but what you don't really get is instrumentalists. They are for singers."

While TV talent shows date back beyond Opportunity Knocks, the 70s show presented by Yates's father, Hughie Green, Holland feels they underplay the skills involved. The key to the success of a band for him is the noise they make together.

"When I first set up my big band I only had Gilson Lavis, the drummer from Squeeze, with me. He was the core element. Whenever a group hits the big time, they always get a new drummer because they really need that. You can make do with rubbish elsewhere."

But where do drummers and their bands learn their trade now? The youthful Holland gleaned his boogie technique from his uncle and from playing in pubs. "You can't do that now because the pubs have gone. It's sad, but they are all coffee bars or flats."

Asked, as he often is, to advise young musicians, Holland tells them to buy his book, do what it says and then write a book about it. "It says you have got to play what you love and love what you play. And then, when you are grown up, you have got to play what you mean and mean what you play. And you should realise you are probably going to make no money and be completely ripped off by people, but that to go on playing might be so enjoyable that it doesn't matter."

Solid advice, no doubt, but it has not been the whole story for Julian Miles Holland of Deptford, south London, now OBE and deputy lieutenant of Kent. His working-class credentials have for some time now been stamped with an "access all areas" pass that has seen him staying at Highgrove with Camilla and Charles and has earned him a label as the best-connected man in the country.

"Coming from Deptford, it was very hard to go down," Holland jokes. "Up was the only possible way." But he is bullish about his close association with the Prince's Trust. "The reason I have done a lot of work for that is that it is very effective. Because it is big it has helped more young people than any other charity. I have seen the difference it makes for people with no self-esteem. There are thousands more that it has tried to help, too. And in those failed cases, at least it tried."

On a personal level, he says, he aims to take people as they come. "I have friends who are in the posh category and some who are in the not-at-all-posh category, and some who you would find it very hard to get any sort of handle on. But I am lucky to have any friends, of course."

For Holland, before he receives his new honour this November in front of 1,000 guests at the annual event staged in aid of Nordoff Robbins and the BRIT Trust, the immediate future holds more big band gigs. "It does seem to be the only way of existing," he explains. "There is no other touring band like it. We are a unique thing and it only works if we are playing all the time.

Chary of the term "national treasure" ("it implies I am like the Tower of London, which was a place of great cruelty"), Holland says he always likes people who run a cafe and want to run a cafe, or run a shop and want to run that shop. "They are not manoeuvring for the next thing. I do want to keep playing now. I don't want to run a television channel."